Prinny's Taylor is the title of a biography of Louis Bazalgette, who was tailor to the Prince of Wales, later George IV, for 32 years. It was written by his great-great-great-great grandson, Charles Bazalgette, and is now available as a trade paperback from Amazon and other distributors.

I invited Sarah to guest here and am glad to say that she graciously accepted.She has not only a thorough and practical knowledge of tailoring and fabrics but also of the Regency period, which I’m sure you will agree is a very valuable combination!

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Hi, Sarah Waldock here, writer of Renaissance murder mysteries and Regency murder mysteries and romances, currently couched as Jane Austen sequels. My interest in the history of fabrics has led to me pursuing a great deal of research into the techniques and use of different fibres particularly in the periods that most interest me. My first book to be published ‘Poison for a Poison Tongue’ should be coming out soon but if you are interested keep an eye on my blog on http://sarahjw.posterous.com/This little piece is on the revolutionary move from one form of obvious conspicuous consumption to a more subtle one.

The new craze for cotton

Up to the 1790’s the way to show off wealth had always been with sumptuous silks and beautiful brocades, the stiffer and more covered with brocading, embroidery, gold threads and so on the better.Then along came the French Revolution and a sudden craze for neo-classicism. Portraits of the likes of Madame Recamier showed women in skimpy lawn and muslin looking sexy; and gone were panniers and brocades.

Mme Recamier 1800 by J. L. David

Cotton prices were also falling dramatically: Cuenca Esteban [quoted in C. Knick Harley ‘Cotton Textile Prices and the Industrial Revolution’ JSTOR] claims that prices fell by one third between 1770 and 1801 and by a further 50% before 1815. This was due in great measure to increases in technology that permitted greater amounts of very fine cotton to be woven that rivalled the fine Indian muslins and therefore permitted the production of the same at home without import costs. Lawn had always been a fine, sheer fabric woven from linen, but over the last years of the 18th century there was a gradual shift from linen as the lightweight yarn of choice to cotton, at first in union, calico for example being made with a warp of linen, woven with a weft of cotton; but gradually all cotton lawn and calico appeared.

Muslin, the finest of plain weave cottons was king; it could be sheer enough to see through as a gauze through which silk petticoats could be viewed in an ever shifting cloud of fabric; or even worn by the more daring, perhaps wetted to be even more transparent, over the knitted pink undergarments that were totally shocking to the older generation and too daring even for many of the younger. It could be woven with stripes or checks of heavier yarn in the weave, or spots, or patterns figured in floating picks to appear on the surface; or it could be embroidered. It could even have metallic threads woven in or be embroidered with metallic threads, and an Indian technique could apply patterns of gold or silver foil.

These are all modern fabrics but show some of the woven effects that were extant including one with metallic threads included.

These are all modern Indian embroidered muslins but again of similar nature to what would be found in the regency including the one with gold embroidery.

Wherein lay the hidden conspicuous consumption? In the laundering – or rather in the difficulty of laundering.Linen could be boiled to get rid of stains, but the delicate muslins, before deodorants, would pick up in a hot ballroom all those unpleasant stains under the arms that would turn them yellow. Could this be why the colours Primrose, Straw, Jonquil and canary yellow were popular, because they did not show the stains as badly? White muslin does not stay white for long. It does not wash white easily without modern washing powders; and there wasn’t even Reckitt’s bluebag until 1850. So to be able to afford to wear a fine white fabric was of itself a status symbol.

Cotton also came as calicos, which could be readily dyed and printed. The printing techniques using rollers meant that the ‘Regency stripes’ we associate with the period were readily available, often with stems of leaves in stripes; there were also diagonal stripes. One technique I find particularly fascinating is the printing of the cloth with different mordants [a mordant helps a dye cling to the cloth, different mordants can change the colour of a dye] that was then dyed as a piece with quercitron, from oak bark, to make a pattern of different shades of drab. Hard wearing calico was less high status than muslin but both practical and pretty with the varieties of patterns becoming available and justly never lost popularity.

One Response to THE NEW CRAZE FOR COTTON: GUEST BLOG BY SARAH J. WALDOCK

Sarah – I am fascinated by the idea of the pink knitted underwear. Was it as skimpy as a modern-day teddy, or more full coverage, like an old-fashioned union suit?Also, of what fiber was it made? Also cotton, or maybe silk?Do you know if ladies continued to wear such garments into the Regency?Thanks,Kat